In 1987 dWM and Jeff-o rented a warehouse space off Queen St. West in Toronto. This space provided a proper rehersal studio and production facility for SCW, and also served as a space for other art and music side projects.

SCW added a new member for playing live shows: guitarist Scott “Skill” Casey, specialist in all styles. SCW at this point moved away from the free improvisational style for playing live that they’d adopted since moving to Toronto, and towards a groovy disco-funk thang. In the studio, SCW continued on in the same style as the first two cassette tape releases and the more recent side projects of PnrH and dWM.

Around this time SCW also purchased an Ensoniq EPS sampler. Although it didn’t have much of an impact on SCW’s live disco-funk music, sampling was essential to SCW’s studio recordings, and would define their style throughout the 90’s.

Here’s a brief panorama of the SCW warehouse space originally recorded on 8mm film

In July of 1987 SCW was invited to play a show in a park back in Waterloo, Ontario where SCW started out from. The city fathers wouldn’t allow SCW to perform as Sucking Chest Wound so the band temporarily changed their name back to Sweet Children of the West, which had been used previously.

The lineup for the show consisted of legendary Waterloo SCW tribute band Some Cliches Wither, followed by SCW, and finishing with Abstress – the organizers of the show.

This performance marked SCW’s final gig as a free inprovisation ensemble. After this show SCW saw the light and was reborn – at least for live shows – as a disco-funk band.

On the way to the show the band stopped by the local St. Vincent de Paul charity shop to buy their stage outfits. Check it out…

Here’s a gallery of photos from the show by Cathie Whittaker

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SCW’s cover version of a fabulous Arthur Jones composition called Sad Eyes

In January of 1987 the full line-up of SCW finally played another live show – the first since moving to Toronto. The show was at a sleazy nightclub called Ildiko’s above a Hungarian restaurant on Bloor St. in Toronto. SCW played there at the invitation of some friends whose band was also playing. The audience was less than 10 people and they all hated SCW. Unbeknownst to SCW, their friend and collaborators KY and William T. Francis had purchased several pounds of raw chicken feet before the show, and proceeded to throw them at the band during our performance. The club owner was not happy about this.

For this show SCW performed strictly improvised music, using drums, bass, guitar, sax, and other noisemakers.The show was recorded on audio tape but the tape has since been lost.

In November 1986 PhrH and dWM put on a live performance, once again operating under the name Security Operations Consultants. The performance took place at Artculture Resource Centre, a Toronto arts performance space located on Queen St. West. The full title of the show was:

A PERFORMANCE (As In Apostacy) or… I’d Rather Be Killing Communists

Phrh and dWM each produced their own halves of the show separately. PnrH’s was titled“Wrecked Baby Killers”and dealt with the military-industrial complex. dWM’s was titled “Dial ‘M’ For Monkey” and dealt with the psychiatric-industrial complex. Prosthetics and make-up were by William T. Francis. Glitter-ball headpiece was by KY.

Here’s a gallery of promotional material for the show

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The show included the other members of SCW as well as many of the people who had participated in pervious SCW shows.

Here’s the booklet that was handed out to the audience

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Here’s some backstage images from “Dial ‘M’ for Monkey”

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Although the performances were recorded to video and digital audio, all the tapes have long been lost.

Only a few still images from the performance were preserved, captured from video monitors during the show

In April 1986 PnrH and dWM wrapped up their weekly Building Balanced Children radio show on the Toronto community radio station CKLN-FM. dWM promptly started a new weekly radio show; the groundbreaking culture-jamming Why Pay More? The premise of Why Pay More? was to create a meta-radio show by sampling bits of all the previous weeks’ shows broadcast on CKLN, and then slicing, dicing, processing and regurgitating the content into a weekly 30 minutes of radiophonic mayhem. The show lasted until September of 1986. Check out the Best of Why Pay More? compilation:

In January 1986 PnrH and dWM began a weekly radio show on CKLN-FM, a Toronto community station. The show was called Building Balanced Children and the premise of the show was to perform a live improvised mixdown using 100% sampled material. They used turntables, tape loops, digital delays and the first affordable digital sampler – the Ensoniq Mirage.

They performed the Building Balanced Children show under the name Security Operations Consultants, which they would also use for a live performance in the fall of 1986.

The Building Balanced Children show lasted until April 1986, and during its run produced some of the most extreme music being broadcast on the Toronto air waves at the time. Hear for yourself – here’s both sides of the BBC compilation tape release:

After the move to Toronto, in 1985 SCW released the compilation cassette tape “A Collection”. This consisted of greatest hits from the first two tapes and selected recordings from their live shows. We won’t post any audio here because it’s documented in previous posts.

“A Collection” cassette tape cover – folded out – by PnrH

Between 1985-1986 the members of SCW finished their studies at the University of Waterloo and headed to the big city. PnrH and dWM were the first to leave, followed later by Roba and Jeff-o. PhrH and dWM embarked on a series of side projects, and SCW played a few one-off gigs, but no new SCW material was recorded during this time. Jeff-o, PnrH and dWM ended up living in a house together in a seedy part of downtown Toronto, but practice/recording space was limited to a tiny section of the slug-infested basement. By this time SCW had sold off all their analog synths and drum machines and were starting to use ‘real’ instruments (drums, guitar, bass, sax etc.) and were also experimenting with some of the new digital technology that was becoming affordable.

In 1984 SCW managed to gain access to the video production facilities at the local cable station, courtesy of our friend and collaborator Michelle Geister. This resulted in a series of experimental videos created by PhrH and dWM. For more info on these videos check out the Sucking Chest Wound YouTube channel…Continue reading →

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Sucking Chest Wound was a collective of Canadian musicians, artists and performers active from 1983-1997. This site documents the history of SCW and archives the sounds, video, graphics and other artefacts produced over Sucking Chest Wound's history.
This site is dedicated to the memory of our friends and collaborators Geoff Hendry (GBH) and Emeric Donath (Eli)